


in a name

by Skyepilot



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Christmas Party, F/M, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Kissing, Lots of use of the name Daisy, Phil being defensive, Phil worrying about Skye, Skye changing her name gives Phil feels, Skye worrying about Phil, Slow Dancing, Unresolved Sexual Tension, implied sexytimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 02:11:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4589103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/pseuds/Skyepilot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short fic. I was just thinking about Coulson saying "Skye" and how him calling her "Daisy" could change their dynamic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in a name

“What if someone’s not so good at-“

She paused and look over at him sitting across from her behind the desk.

“Taking care of themselves?”

He’d been waiting for this, actually.

Given her plenty of space to let it come out gradually.

Her eyes went to the picture frame on his desk, the back of it facing her.

“Can I?” she started.

He nodded as she leaned forward to take it in her hands and turned it around to look at the photo inside.

Younger, she guessed.  Maybe it was just that she was smiling?

It made her smile.  The idea that May could have this again.

“You guys look really happy,” she nodded, handing it back to him.

“We were,” Andrew smiled, taking it and leaving it folded on the top of the desk.

“Are?” she corrected.

“Working on it,” he said, raising his eyebrows.  “But let’s keep the focus on you.  You didn’t come here to talk about my love life, I hope?”

“No,” she said, relaxing back into the chair. “About Bahrain.”

The calm exterior of his face slipped just a little. “Excuse me?”

“When…that happened.  What did you do?”

He wanted to think this through for a minute. 

She was asking for advice.  Based on his own experience.

This wasn’t deflection either.  Skye was being too careful.  He could tell when she was trying to stop the conversation instead of starting it.

“You’ve talked to May about this?” he asked aloud.

“A little,” she said, fidgeting. “Not exactly.  Just that there were Inhumans involved.  People like me.”

“You still worry about that?”

“Some,” she answered quickly. Then hesitated. “I just don’t know what to do.”

Andrew sighed.  “This isn’t about you, is it?”

“I’m trying to adjust,” she said.  “Not…pull back too far.”

“Daisy, do you remember what you told me?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Which was?” he pressed.

“Because I’m doing the right thing.”

“For yourself,” he said. “Not just for everyone else.”

“That’s right.”

Smiling at her, he sat forward a little, tapping his finger on the desk.

“Coulson.”

He watched her eyes flicker at just the word.

“Is that who you’re worried about?”

“I just want to help him,” she said.

So earnestly.  Is that all she wants?

“I always left the door open,” he said, after a moment. “I told her that I was there for her. Kept in contact with her mother.  But, I didn’t push.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Do you regret that?”

“Melinda is…Melinda.  It had to be when she was ready. If at all.”

“Okay,” she said, standing.

“Phil Coulson is not Melinda May.”

He looked up at her slowly, seeing her staring back at him.

She nodded and walked out of his office.

 

#

“Andrew said I should get used to other people wanting to help me.  To not push them away,” he said standing up from behind the desk and reaching for the button on his blazer, then letting it go when he didn’t get it on the first attempt.

“And I’ve been doing that,” he said.

Rather defensively, she thought.  All this just because she came in late and asked if she could help him.

“He also said I should feel okay letting them know when I’m feeling overwhelmed.  That it’s okay for me to tell them ‘no’.”

She was staring at him with her eyebrows raised.

“Is...this one of those times?”

“You want to tell me what this is about?” he asked, sitting on the edge of his desk.

He read in between her careful words and saw something else there. 

“It seems that,” she started, “After everything that’s happened, things have gotten very-“

She was trying to land on the word, but couldn’t find a description for this feeling.

It wasn’t distance, really. 

They saw each other more than ever now that she had taken over the Index.  And he was adjusting to the prosthetic, even letting her help him at the shooting range.  All very practical things.

“Sad?” he said shrugging.

“I was going to say…impersonal,” she finished. “But I think ‘sad’ is better.”

He rarely used words that defined his own emotions, even though he was comfortable talking about others. 

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be,” she smiled, looking down at his hand resting on his knee.

“You’re not the one that changed your name.”

His eyes met hers for a moment, and then there was that familiar intensity.  Like a pull, she took a step closer to him without thinking.

“You’re already helping me,” he said, standing up, breaking the contact.

“And you’ve been helping me,” she said. 

She hesitated, then reached out and touched his arm.  A little more eagerly than she intended.

“I just wanted to let you know, that I’m here for you.”

“Sky-“

He stopped himself, eyes wide for a moment, before he looked away.

It wasn’t the first time it had happened.  It’s just that when it did, he always looked like someone who had broken a rule.

Only, he wasn’t usually turning a different shade.

She slowly took her hand off his arm, and he seemed relieved for a moment.

“I don’t care if you call me Skye,” she said.  Just like she had told him before.

“It’s not your name, though,” he answered.

It was, when they first met.  The name she had given herself, waiting. The name that everyone had called her.

The name he knew her by.

Names were funny things. 

“I can call you ‘Phil’,” she teased.  “Then we’ll be even.”

He looked appalled, but at least not sad.

“I don’t think so, Agent Johnson.”

The little light was in his eyes, though.

 

#

Just stay awake.

The words are playing over and over in his head.

“Keep her awake,” Lincoln said, after putting the small flashlight in her eyes. “She has a concussion, at the least.”

_At the least._

He remembers how she internalized things before.  There’s some bruising on her arms now.  It could be worse, she could be bleeding inside.

“What kind of doctor are you?” he shouts back at him.

“I’m a med student,” he replies, agitated. “And anyway, we’re not like you. I need better equipment.”

The other Inhuman, the one she’d fought, he’d channeled her powers back at her.

What was she thinking?

“Skye,” he says it out loud, now that Lincoln is away, fumbling around in the medical supplies inside the safehouse. 

He’s going to be disappointed.

She looks out of it, her lips a purplish color.

It reminds him too much of close calls.

“Stay with me,” he says.

He hates to do it but he taps her face a bit lightly.

His fingers check her pulse.  She’s still here, still breathing.

“Daisy. _Please_.”

Her eyelids flutter rapidly, and he calls for Lincoln.

Then they open, and she looks up at Coulson.  Smiles.

“I hate it when you call me ‘Agent Johnson’.”

Lincoln appears out of breath, looking between both of them.

“Noted,” Coulson answers her, frowning. Or at least wanting to.

He wants to say lots of other unhelpful things at the moment, but instead, he helps her to sit up more as Lincoln just stares between the two of them.

“Be careful,” Lincoln says, when she winces. “She probably has some fracturing.”

She’s able to get upright on the bed and Coulson walks away towards the kitchen, returns with a glass of water.

As she tries to lift a hand, she says, “Ouch” and instead he leans forward and tilts it so she can drink.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what the hell I was thinking?” she says afterwards, a little tiredly.

“No,” he answers. “I’m saving that for later.”

 

#

“Mind if I cut in?”

“Depends on who’s asking?” she answers, as she pauses with Simmons on the dance floor.

Simmons gives a scandalized glance at her partner and mentions wanting to ‘touch up on the bubbly’ before she excuses herself.

“Phil Coulson,” he answers, bowing a little, as she laughs. “I’d curtsey, but I busted up my knee fighting Super Nazis last week.”

She looks down at the cast on his leg and sighs.

“Does this mean I’ll have to lead?”

“Yes.”

Her arm goes out to make a frame for him, and then his hand is in hers, while her other slides slowly around his waist.

“Lucky for you, it’s a slow song.”

“Lucky me,” he answers, sliding in a little bit closer to her, despite the stiffness of the cast.

“Nice Christmas tie,” she said, eyeing the gaudy tree on his chest. “Someone really thoughtful must have found it for you.”

“It even lights up,” he said with a small smile.

“I know.”

She slowly lead him backwards a few steps as he managed, watching mingling people pretend not to eye them.

“Ah, company holiday parties,” he sighed, glancing around the room dripping with garlands and ornaments. They’d be still finding glitter years later. Guaranteed.

“Whose idea was this again?”

“Definitely Simmons’,” she answered. “Don’t look at me.”

“Everyone’s looking at you right now,” he teased.  “Do you have an exit strategy?”

“Do you?” she asked, as he pulled her closer when the music slowed down.

“How about the kitchen?” he whispered against her ear.

“What’s in the kitchen?”

“A bottle of brandy I’d like to get into.  And hopefully, you.”

“Wow. Phil,“ she said pulling back to look at him. “That’s quite a line.”

“That came out wrong,” he said quickly, giving her a pleading look.

“Mind if I cut in?” Hunter said, “Since you two lovelies have set the world on fire long enough?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, letting go of Coulson.

“It means, they won’t speed up the record while the Director is on the floor,” Hunter muttered, eyeing Coulson’s cast.

“It’s fine,” Coulson said, smiling at her.

 

#

“Daisy.”

She remembered how she had been so fond of the way he’d used to say her name.

Like it was something that might get away from him, if he wasn’t too careful.

“Phil.”

He walked over to her, slid his watch off his wrist and set it on the table.

She’d been gone for a few weeks recruiting Inhumans and he had just gotten back from a field op.

Hard to say, but by the looks of him, things had come out okay.  He look resolved, like he was still thinking it through, the edge of adrenaline still there.

But not doubt, or anger, or disappointment.

She liked the way he said her name now.

“Again?”

“Daisy,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her neck, and then there was a smile pressed there, as she began to work on the buttons of his shirt.

“Daisy,” he said it again, against her cheek, as she got impatient and pulled his shirts loose from his slacks, sliding her hand up beneath them until his warm skin was beneath her palms.

“Daisy,” he said it again, between a quick kiss pressed against her mouth and then her parted lips driving the kiss between them deeper.

They stumbled over towards the bed, as she pulled him down with her, his fingers finding their way into her hair, threading themselves between the strands, as she started to go for his belt.

Something had shifted when he started calling her Daisy all those months ago.

He told over Christmas while they got drunk on brandy and made out in the kitchen, that her changing her name had made him reevaluate their relationship.

What exactly they were to each other.

As she undresses him beneath her, carefully, slowing things down as her thoughts catch up with her desire, he watches her, letting her take her time.

Tugging his t-shirt over his head, until he’s settled back against the bed, his fingers smoothing out his hair by habit.

What he said was he kept being reminded of how much they fit.  With, or without SHIELD.

He decided, after the safehouse, he wasn’t going to see her like something he might lose.

As he caresses her face, her breasts, his hands on her waist, the not-so-subtle press of his hips up against hers, she’s thinking about all of the particular ways that they fit.

“Daisy,” he says it again.

He makes it sounds so strong.

For such a delicate name. 

 

 


End file.
